Tide Coldwater
The other day while I was sitting in my room watching television, I saw a commercial that I thought would be worthy of discussing. I think most of us have seen the commercial, or at least heard of the product advertised. I am referring to Tide’s new Coldwater laundry detergent. The product eliminates the use of hot water for doing laundry. The claim of the commercial is “If we all washed in cold with Tide Coldwater, we would save enough energy to light up homes in 1,000 towns.” Now I know it is completely unrealistic to think that everyone would wash with Tide Coldwater, but it is not unrealistic to think that everyone would like to save themselves money. The Tide website says that if you wash with Tide Coldwater, you can save up to 80% of energy per load. I may not be that good at math, but I can understand that saving that much energy on every load would quickly add up. Just think about the money that a family could save by switching over to Tide Coldwater. Cleary if a person uses less hot water, they are going to pay less.
Although the Tide company may be more concerned with selling their product than they are about saving energy, they have done an excellent job of promoting energy conservation. In order to promote energy conservation, as well as their product, the company has created a sweepstakes for people who have pledged to use Coldwater. Prizes for the winners include a variety of energy-saving products, offering further encouragement to use less energy. The Coldwater website gives people suggestions on different ways to save energy. Tide Coldwater is a great way to reduced our use of energy and money.
This supports the idea that people usually exploit opportunities to make themselves better off. The Tide commercial offers an incentive for using it’s product. The incentives are that if a person uses Tide Coldwater then they will be saving money and energy. Other incentives include the chance to win prizes in the sweepstake. In this case simply by using the laundry detergent a person can make themselves better off. According to this economic theory, would it be safe to say that most of the people who saw this commercial will have switched over to using Tide Coldwater?
If anyone is interested in knowing about the international use of energy here is a great website:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/world.html
8 comments:
When I go shopping for a laundry detergent I tend to concern myself with two questions: what is the net cost of the product to my pocket book and will it clean my clothes better than any other product? Of course, some products may do a better job of getting the dirt out of my laundry, but only at a higher price. Thus, I must consider how much I'm really willing to pay for clean clothes. For example, some stains require hot water to really get the dirt out and I wonder if Coldwater can do as good a job as a regular detergent can.
I personally have tried this type of laundry detergent in my house before, because what was promised in the commercials seemed very beneficial. We all felt that the detergent worked just as well as any other, but in the end the savings on the energy bill just wasn't there. There wasn't really any difference at all from before we started using it to after. We ultimately went back to our old detergent because the higher price just wasn't worth it.
I've seen that commercial several times and I think it is just no more than a way to make new incentives for the folk. What they really want is more profit by working out this new nonsense to attract people to buy its new products. They don't care much about the energy. That's exactly what the commercials do nowadays: they try to allure more people to buy its products by harnessing the advantage of invironment pollustion, scarce energy and sometimes the relationship between family members. well, there are no harm by doing it. I just think that we should make our decision using out rationality.
This seems like an excellent product because it offers to save the consumer money and promises to conserve energy. Recently, my mother had to purchase a new washing machine, and she chose a machine that was energy conserving (I am guessing it was only because it was on sale.) and with it came a sample of the Tide Coldwater detergent. She liked the way it worked, but when it came time to purchase more detergent, she went back to the original brands because of the high price of Tide Coldwater. Also, she typically washed clothes in cold water because it saved us money on our heating bill. This product seems very rational, if only the price was more affordable. Consumers, like my mom, save money by washing clothes in cold water, but spend that money buying detergent that works in the same water!
Ok. So I am wondering, in economic terms, are they saying there is a low opportunity cost? It sounds that way. Yet I gather from the other posts they are finding that really the opportunity cost is fairly high. Are they lying in a way?
From a consumer's point of view i would switch over to using Tide Coldwater because of the energy conservation and decreased price. It's a good enough incentive and as a consumer, i do like to weigh the benefits. These benefits are definitely worth it.
Personally I have never seen this commercial, but reading about it in this blog has caught my attention. I would defiantly consider buying this product and trying it out being that it conserves energy and will save you money in the long run. The only problem that comes to mind is stain removal. Yes, it may save you money but if it doesn’t get the stains out, you will eventually lose money buying stain removal or by ruining your clothes.
This is a product that I may be buying the next time I need laundry detergent. To be honest, I only know enough about doing laundry to get by! When at home, I always wash my clothes in cold water to reduce any risk of further shrinking clothes or have colors "bleed" together. The fact that this new Tide is designed specifically for coldwater use and brigns to mind how much energy and money (I've never thought about this before) I save makes me want to buy the product. Additionally, if they are further promoting this product with sweepstake like incentives, why wouldn't I want to buy this product? Next time I go shopping for detergent, I'm going to try this new product.
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